NOT RACIST

Re: “Heck­ler tar­get­ing Jag­meet Singh re­minder racism ex­ists in Canada: Prof” (The Canadian Press, Sept. 11): What if this heck­ler had ha­rangued Wynne or Trudeau? Would we call that racism? Hardly. A lot of peo­ple are con­cerned about ex­ces­sive ac­com­mo­da­tion (like Fri­day Mus­lim prayers in pub­lic schools) in Canada, and that does not make them racist. She was rude but not racist, and Singh chose not to re­spond to the sub­stance of her con­cerns in any way, shape or form — in­ter­est­ing. Yelling at a Sikh can­di­date does not make some­one a racist un­less you’re yelling at him be­cause he is a Sikh — and there is no ev­i­dence she was. The “R” word is be­ing thrown around all too eas­ily these days.

Lon PALMeR (She be­haved in­ap­pro­pri­ately and de­tracted from what­ever point she was try­ing to make. You can ask tough ques­tions with­out be­ing of­fen­sive)